


wild horses couldn't drag me away

by getmean



Category: Bill & Ted (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Jealousy, M/M, Making Out, Pre-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, just a vignette of how bill and ted spend their weekends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26312533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: I watch mutely as he crosses the room to his record player, and starts to shuffle through the stacks of records that surround it. My eyes and nose and mouth still sliding outta my face. The room is full up of orange light and smoke. It hits in Ted’s black hair and his black eyes, real nice when he turns and grins at me, brandishing a Stones record for my approval.
Relationships: Ted "Theodore" Logan/Bill S. Preston Esq.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 56





	wild horses couldn't drag me away

**Author's Note:**

> in my defence i haven't watched the movie in like maybe over a year, but god came to me and told me to write bill and ted fanfic, and who am i to say no to that? if things are completely wrong here yes they are no they didn't <3

On weekends, me and Ted have a ritual. 

First, we hit the corner store down the street from Ted’s house. The kinda place that has this floor-to-ceiling Perspex screen that Ted always tells me is bulletproof. I always ask, _how the fuck would you know?_ but he’s too busy laughing to tell me. I don’t think it’s bulletproof. I think it’s to keep the guy behind getting beat on when he charges two dollars for a pack of chips. Not that I’d beat on him. It’s just, me and Ted’ve got five bucks between us. It doesn’t leave much room for experimentation. We buy kettle corn and Red Vines, and a two-litre of Cola. The guy behind the scratched plastic eyes us. We grin back. 

Our money goes on weed, stuff for the band, and that’s it. Everything left over is Red Vines and kettle corn. I think in the future, I’ll be in charge of the band’s financials. Hell, I’ve already cut costs on merch. Ted was buying brand-name Sharpies, with the TM. Buying shirts new in the packet, from Target. Now we thrift, and use dollar store markers. More money for weed. More money for that cymbal I’ve been eyeing down at Spider Music, that me and Ted are going in on together. _Dude,_ he says, wide-eyed. _Neither of us play drums_.

Not important. Babes love guys in bands. They don’t have to know we’re only half of one. 

But back to the ritual; it begins on Friday nights, and ends Sunday morning when Ted’s dad yells about being sick of having to feed another mouth. I dunno what he means by that, but I get outta there as quick as I can. It’s all part of the ritual anyway, just like him coming down to yell at us for playing music through the amp I always bring along. I guess at some point I’m gonna learn to stop bringing it, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s just so fucking killer to hear Ted playing through that thing; how can I resist? Hair in his mouth, eyes closed. He’s so fucking cool I can’t help myself. So I bring it. And Ted’s dad kicks me out Sunday morning, and I go by the same corner shop with the Perspex and buy Pop Tarts, eat them cold outta the packet on my walk home. Cinnamon flavour; Ted’s favourite, and mine too. Best friends share shit like that.

So after we get the snacks, we dump ‘em off at Ted’s house and head back out. I’ve just got this new board I’m trying to learn how to land tricks on, so every Friday after class we head to the skate park and Ted films me skating. He’s a killer filmmaker. He got a Kodak for Christmas, so basically he’s a director. Yells _you got this!_ at me as I glide along, wind in my hair, and eat shit when I try and do something too hard. 

I cut my knee today. Wearing shorts and trying to skate isn’t a great combo. We hobble back to mine and Ted douses me with antiseptic, pulled from under the bathroom sink, and calls me a pussy when I wince. Dabbing at my bloody knee with toilet paper. 

“That’s misogynistic,” I say, and he laughs. That dopey laugh of his. I watch the bathroom lights shine in his dark hair, and don’t say anything else.

My knee throbs along with my heart. When Ted presses a bandaid over it, he’s over-gentle, eyes lit up like it’s funny. Fingertips smoothing down the sticky parts as he says, “Lemme rip this off when it’s ready, ’s all caught up in your leg hair.” 

Then Missy comes home, and Ted starts acting stupid. Calling her ‘Mrs. Preston’ and telling her about the band. Her giggling and asking after the footage he got of me eating shit. But it’s Friday and I don’t like to be mad at Ted so we leave, and on the way to his we pick up an eighth and somewhere between then and now he’s forgotten about Missy. 

The bandaid keeps tugging in my leg hair. The scrape underneath still throbbing, and hurting. 

Ted rolls a messy joint, and we smoke it. Another part of our ritual. His dad works weekends, so we have the house to ourselves for a while. Both of us red-eyed and fumbling our way through the cupboards. Ted makes a mean grilled cheese; a slice of bacon between two slabs of cheese; fried, melted, crispy. We devour two, and leave the dishes in the sink. Ted’s eyes are heavy-lidded. I wanna put my hands on his face and tug them open, palms to his cheeks to spread his mouth up, to deepen that dopey smile on his face. 

He tosses his hair back. “Bill,” he says. “If only two percent is milk, what’s the other ninety-eight?” 

We’re tearing through a family pack of Oreos from the cupboard. I chew, swallow, and say, “I dunno.”

Ted says, “Makes you think,” and I nod. It does. 

We’re sat at the kitchen table. The house is all quiet around us, making my ears ring. Normally I hate silence but with Ted it’s okay. I can hear him chewing, can hear him tapping his foot against the ground. The hum of the fridge and the buzz of the light over our heads. 

“We gonna rent a movie or what?” I ask, and Ted shrugs, his whole body going into it. Black Oreo cookie crumbs on his fingers, as he dives back into the packet.

“You wanna see _Weekend at Bernies_?”

I grin, and snag an Oreo from the packet before he can take it. “Yeah, dude.”

Blockbusters smells like feet and old carpet. We prowl the shelves, Ted muttering, “Double-you, double-you, double-you…” under his breath the whole time. We pass P, we pass U, we pass —

“It’s not here,” I mutter, and Ted’s shoulders slump. The two of us staring at the space between _A Week’s Vacation_ and _Weekend Pass_. 

“Not cool,” he mutters.

“Bogus,” I agree. 

I’m too stoned to shift past it. I can see Ted is too. Both of us staring at the shelf as if the movie is gonna appear in front of us. I screw my eyes shut, and then open them again. The gap in the shelf stares back at me. 

“Well, fuck,” I say, and turn to the side to catch Ted doing the same thing I did. Face all scrunched up around his closed eyes, teeth bared in his efforts to conjure it. Fists clenched around the unbuttoned and dangling cuffs of his flannel. It looks like he’s really doing something, like _really_ really. So much that I glance back at the shelf just to make sure it hasn’t appeared. If anyone could make it happen it’d be Ted. 

_A Week’s Vacation_ sits one step away from _Weekend Pass_ , still. We end up getting some movie with Brooke Shields on the front from the dollar bin, which Ted loudly reads the blurb of as we wander home. 

“Two children are shipwrecked alone on a lost tropical island,” he says. Using his Moviefone voice. “Blah blah blah…oh _dude_.”

I kick at a rock, and watch it fly off into somebody’s front lawn. “What?”

Ted turns to me, eyes wide as he holds the tape up next to his face. The whites of his eyes are so red. “We rented a girly movie,” he mutters, horror in his voice. I groan, going limp with disappointment. He brandishes the box at me. “Look, here, ‘When their love happens, it’s as natural as the sea’.”

In unison, we groan again. I drag my hands down my face. First Missy, then my knee, now this? Fridays are for me and him, for a movie we can get stoned and laugh at, or yell at. Not whatever that is. “Shit, dude.” I huff, and I bump against his side as I snatch the tape from him. Scanning the box, like maybe he’d read the wrong part. “The dollar bin betrayed us, Ted.”

He’s sulky when he replies. “So totally uncool, dude.”

The light is starting to get dusky and orange by the time we walk back to Ted’s house; our shadows long and black on the sidewalk, rippling up the front steps as I hang back to watch Ted hunt for his house key. His feet always scuff against the concrete when he walks, like he doesn’t wanna pick his feet up. I know the soles of his sneakers are worn down to nothing — when he puts his feet up on the coffee table a few minutes later, I can see the dirty white of his socks through the holes. I poke my finger through one of them, and dissolve into laughter when he jumps, and yelps. 

“I’m ticklish!” he cries, which makes me laugh harder, which makes him laugh too. That big, dopey laugh. I forget all about the stupid video, my bleeding knee, the way Ted had straightened up and tried to smooth down his hair when Missy came home. Instead we grapple together on the couch, Ted laughing and trying to squirm away from me as I jab my fingers into his sides, to tickle him. I only stop when he slides off, headfirst, still laughing, tears at the corners of his eyes. 

His feet are at my eye-level. Delivering the final blow, I wiggle my finger into one of the bigger holes in his shoe, and say, “Dude, these are like, so completely thrashed.” 

Upside down, Ted’s black hair fans out on the carpet. His face looks different from this angle. His eyes are all curved up, features all jumbled like someone took ‘em and moved ‘em around. Like one of those paintings by that guy Ms. Oakley showed us in art class. I can see up his nose. Then he pushes the dirty sole of his sneaker against my face and snort-laughs, and I forget all about his stupid face because I’m busy wrestling the shoe off his foot to throw at him. 

We end up crumpled around each other on the floor, wedged between the coffee table and the couch. Catching our breath, my feet still on the couch cushions and my face jammed into Ted’s armpit. He smells like his sister’s deodorant, and weed. The hand attached to the arm attached to Ted, resting around my shoulders, pats idly at my back. 

“We should make patches,” he says, thoughtfully. He always gets his best ideas when he’s upside down. “Wyld Stallyns patches.”

“Sick,” I breathe. And then, “I can’t sew.”

“Me neither.” 

We lie there in silence for a bit, trying to get past that roadblock. Ted’s really warm up against me; it’s nice. I’m not so stoned anymore, just sleepy, so I close my eyes for just a bit. The softness of his worn-out old flannel against my cheek, the warmth of him through it. He really does smell good. Maybe I need to start wearing girls deodorant. 

“We could draw them,” he suggests, and I raise my hand to pump my fist sleepily in the air.

“You’re a genius, dude,” I mumble. “Hell yeah, we could draw ‘em.”

“Just like the shirts,” Ted agrees, and I nod my head. He’s a real good artist. Ted’s pretty much good at everything, actually. Then a hand comes to pat at my cheek. “Hey, don’t fall asleep.”

When we both right ourselves, Ted’s face has gone back to normal. No more jumbled up features; they’ve all gone back to their normal spots. Me, I feel so weird and tired it’s like all the different parts of me are sliding out from where they’re meant to be. Ted’s grinning, his hair a mess around his face from our wrestling.

I see his brow furrow, his smile dip. He asks, “Do I have something on my face, dude?” and just like that all the bits of me that were sliding out slide right back in. I jolt, and try and play it cool.

Snorting, I mutter, “No dude, just like, your face.” Pretty solid recovery. Ted laughs, I laugh, and then we pick ourselves up off the floor and head for Ted’s bedroom. 

I lie on the bed while Ted rolls another joint, feet up on the wall and my head hanging off the end. If Ted’s so smart upside down, then what’s stopping me? He says it’s something about all the blood going up there and making you think quicker. My face feels hot and tight there’s so much blood in there, but my thoughts don’t feel any faster. 

“I think killer whales get a bad rep,” Ted’s saying, eyes on the joint in his hands. “Like, being called something like that — it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, y’know?” He licks the paper. “Fucked up, if you think about it.”

“Bet if you were called Killer Ted, you’d eat baby seals too,” I say, and he huffs. 

“Dude. I’m a pacifist.” He hands me the joint. Ted always lets me spark it; he’s generous like that. “Killer Ted or not.”

“You just learnt what that means,” I retort, watching as he stands to yank his bedroom window open. That huge soft flannel hanging off his shoulders as he collapses back into the desk chair. 

I right myself. Light the joint, and wait until we’ve passed it back and forth a couple times before I ask, “Wanna listen to music?” 

That dumb dollar bin movie. I don’t wanna watch it but I know Ted’ll insist; he hates the thought of wasting money. He’s the sorta guy who rewinds the tape before he brings it back, just to avoid the charge. Right now, he’s eating Red Vines, a doubtful crease between his eyebrows.

“We don’t work on weekends, bro.” 

The room is all heavy with the smell of weed; skunky, sweet. I suck in a breath, and mutter, “No, dude, like — we could listen to something else.”

Ted’s eyes light up, and he laughs, showing off the red stripe down the middle of his tongue from the Red Vines. “Oh dude,” he reaches across to settle the joint into the ashtray on the window. “I thought you meant listen through a few Stallyns tapes.”

I watch mutely as he crosses the room to his record player, and starts to shuffle through the stacks of records that surround it. My eyes and nose and mouth still sliding outta my face. The room is full up of orange light and smoke. It hits in Ted’s black hair and his black eyes, real nice when he turns and grins at me, brandishing a Stones record for my approval. Woodenly, I nod. The joint is hitting me there in the part of my brain that makes my limbs move, all of a sudden. Like there’s a giant hand pressing me into Ted’s badass KISS bedsheets. I don’t think he can tell but I’m paranoid he can; eyes bugging right outta my head as I watch him settle the needle over the record, all careful. 

Normally, we’d be sunk six feet deep into the couch watching whatever movie Blockbuster had for us that week. Does it mean something that we’re not on the usual ritual anymore? It does to me. It goes: cornershop, skate, Blockbusters, smoke. The Stones haven’t got a place in it. Me sitting here with my face falling apart doesn’t either. 

I can still smell Ted’s girly deodorant. When he sits down next to me on the bed. When he leans into my side with his eyes all heavy-lidded, his mouth all loose and smiling. When he touches my knee, when he asks, “When should we watch that movie? Brooke Shields is such a babe, dude.”

She’s a real babe. A babe on another level of babe-dom. I should be jumping at the chance watch her wander ‘round naked on a desert island. My cut knee is throbbing under the bandaid. Bill’s arm is slung over my shoulders; soft flannel, warm body. 

From very far away, Ted’s voice: “Bill, you alright?” 

I eat a Red Vine. By the time I reply, the light isn’t so orange any more. It’s cooled off, gone blue-purple. Through the open window I can smell cut grass, and fresh air. I take a deep lungful of it, and say, “She’s so hot, dude, unreal.” 

Ted slaps me on the back. He handles his weed better than me, on account of him always being stoned. Guess it makes sense my face is falling apart and he’s laughing and talking about Brooke Shields and The Stones. I think it makes his dad real mad, the whole always-stoned situation. Thing is, he gets stoned when his dad gets mad. It’s one of those self-fulfilling prophecy things Ted was talking about earlier. 

We finish the joint, and the record. Bill sits on the floor with his head pillowed back against the mattress, next to my knees. I keep messing with my bandaid, with the adhesive, pulling it and pulling my leg hairs at the same time. Before long, Bill slaps my hand away. I wanna ask him more about his idea for patches, but can’t make the sounds leave my mouth. All I can do is watch the light change and let my head empty.

Then we watch the movie. We eat the kettle corn. We drink the Cola. Brooke Shields flirts her way through the whole movie, and at one point Ted leans into me and says, “Y’know, the guy looks a little like you.”

He doesn’t, he’s just curly-headed and blond. But I’ve been watching him too. Something about the way he holds himself; it’s Ted all over. Kids at school always get us mixed up; I’ve been called Ted by more teachers than those who called me Bill. Ted the same. I’m too stoned to make sense of it. Maybe I need to hang my head off the edge of the sofa. Ted’d be able to understand what’s going on.

“I’m really stoned,” I say, in reply. The movie is running along quietly; Ted hates when the loud parts get too loud. It means it’s pretty much background noise to our own conversation, which is exactly how we like it. Me and Ted are funnier than whatever happens on the screen, always. Normally we are, anyway. When I’ve got all my face together. 

Ted laughs, that big brash noise. His arm snakes around my shoulders. “William,” he says, voice turning grand, “even the best of us succumb to vice.” 

I’m succumbing to something, that’s for sure. No amount of kettle corn that I shovel in my mouth can sober me up to that. 

Sometimes our ritual deviates. I dunno what has to be added to the mix to make it take that turn but whatever it is, it happens. Sometimes all that’s gotta happen is Ted sits a little too close to me. Or maybe I’m just feeling a certain kinda way and so is he. Maybe we’ve had a good practice, and we’re both riding high on making music. Or we’re just stoned, and feeling stupid, and the house is big and empty and echoing, and I’m still thinking about the way Ted had smoothed the bandaid against my knee, and about how he’d smiled at Missy, and the smell of him and the warmth of him — 

He kisses just like you’d expect. Over-eager, excited. His hand gripping at my chin and his mouth half-curved in a smile, even as he huffs out a pleased noise against me. The movie plays along to nobody in the background. We don’t pay it any attention. My hand is fisted in the front of his t-shirt; dark grey, it shows up his pit stains when we’re running around filming and skating. Butter-soft to the touch. The hard flatness of his chest underneath, warm even through the fabric when I lay my hand flat against him. 

“Dude,” Ted mutters, as he breaks away just a little. “You’re so good at kissing, bro.” 

“You’re good at everything,” I mumble, and draw him back to me. The dark room like a thick blanket over both of us. Curled together with my knees up to my chest, trapped between our bodies. The thump thump thump of my pulse in the scrape on my knee. 

This is a good deviation, but it’s a deviation we don’t let happen too much. It makes it better, anyway. Nobody else gets Ted like this. Makes me feel all swollen and red and puffed up in my chest when I think about it. Getting to sink my fingers into his hair. Trading kisses as the night draws in around us, as Brooke and that blond guy make eyes at each other on the TV screen. What’s better than making out with your best friend? Ted’s a genius, he shreds like no-one else, and he gets me. Just like I get him. 

He tastes like Red Vines. The collar of his flannel smells like weed, until I push it off his shoulders and then he just smells like him. Girl’s deodorant, and skin. I think if girls knew how Ted kissed, he’d be popular. Hands clutching at my face, all his easy sleepy energy channeled into something blunt, like a baseball bat. Knocking me over the head with it. The sofa cushions behind my back, the movie quiet, the room quiet, our kissing, quiet. 

I’m selfish. I’m glad girls don’t know how he kisses. I get mad when he moons over Missy. They’re just not right for him. Ted needs a girl who likes the same music as him, who loves the band, who loves weed and grilled cheeses and making movies. For now, I’ll do. I know at some point he’ll probably find his own Brooke Shields who’s crazy for the Stayllyns, who’ll be able to roll joints, and land an ollie. She’ll be tall like him, and pretty in that understated girl-next-door-way I know he secretly likes. And he’ll kiss her like he kisses me. 

For now, Ted’s kissing me. Feels so good I wanna write a song about it. Something upbeat and fast that makes you wanna shake your whole body along to the beat. The living room is dark. The movie is playing its credits. My mouth feels warm, and bruised. Ted pats teasingly at my cheek, and grins. I grin along too; huge. It’s just the way he makes me feel. Careful dabbing at my bloody knee. The way his fingers curl at my jaw. 

On weekends, me and Ted have a ritual, or two.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!!


End file.
